Trailblazing women in the Florida Thoroughbred industry have been
setting milestones and quietly becoming power players in the game. Their efforts and accomplishments have changed the trajectory of the sport forever. The Women Legends of the Sport features these history-making breeders, trainers and executives in Florida.

By Gary West

In November of 1986, Tampa Bay Downs was auctioned off to settle a dispute between its owners.

“I’m not a very good partner,” Stella Thayer says about the partnership that dissolved with the auction. Her words flow easily before giving way to a faint smile. It’s a knowing smile, the sort of smile that expresses appreciation for salt water taffy and irony. Smartly and distinctly dressed, she wears a matching blue blazer and skirt, with a silk blouse and a woven gold necklace. People at the track can all readily spot her, pick her out of the crowd, and at least two concession workers refer to her with respectful congeniality as “Ms. Stella.” She’ll watch a few races, stop by the box-seat area to chat with a trainer and his wife and to ask about their children. The irony stretches: It’s impossible to imagine her not being a good partner.

But her partner back there in the 1980s was George Steinbrenner, the mercurial owner of the New York Yankees. As president of the racetrack, Thayer had the final word on management decisions, but Steinbrenner, whose nickname was “The Boss,” wasn’t very receptive to any word, final or otherwise, that didn’t originate from within. Their partnership had a rather bumpy six-year ride. When Thayer fired the racetrack’s general manager without Steinbrenner’s approval, they ended up in court, even though the move was ratified by the board of directors.

Thayer must have been quite comfortable there, in court. Having earned her JD degree from Columbia, she had practiced law for years. But this dispute needed to be settled, this imbroglio allayed, for the good of racing generally and Florida racing particularly. And so at an auction that attracted several interested parties initially, but finally came down to two, according to a contemporary account in the Orlando Sentinel, Thayer and her brother, Howell Ferguson, bought out Steinbrenner in a cash deal, bidding $16.5 million for the racetrack.

And that, as the poet says, has made all the difference.

Shortly after the auction, Thayer named Lorraine King to lead her management team. A former horse owner, King started at the track when it was known as Florida Downs, in 1970, and worked her way up from office manager to controller to general manager. Her promotion marked the first time that a major racetrack was owned by one woman and managed by another.

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Valerie Dailey is the kind of person who, once she has decided to get wet, jumps into the deep end of the pool. About 15 or so years ago, before Lonny Powell arrived as CEO, Dailey decided to plunge into the Florida Thoroughbred Breeders’ and Owners’ Association.

“What can I do to get on the board?” she asked a prominent member of the FTBOA’s board of directors.

“You’ll never get on the board,” he told her, as Dailey recalls the conversation.

“Why?” she asked, no doubt surprised by the certainty of his prediction and by the inflexibility of “never.”

“You’re a small breeder and nobody knows who you are,” he said, and then added, as if tossing away a used Kleenex tissue, “and you’re female. It’s not going to work.”

Not going to work? Well, at least he wasn’t totally oblivious: He noticed she was female. Dailey was more surprised than she was discouraged by her run-in with benightedness. As it turned out, “never” wasn’t a very long time, and everybody associated with Florida’s Thoroughbred industry soon knew who Dailey was. Elected to the board in 2019, she became the first female president of the FTBOA in 2021-2022.

“I certainly felt welcome on the board and didn’t encounter any kind of gender bias,” Dailey says, and then, downplaying her unprecedented election as president, she adds, “It was a wonderful opportunity, and it’s great to open the door so others might enter.”

And so Dailey and Thayer are two more pillars that support horse racing in Florida, two more reasons that the state leads the way in a trend that soon could become one of the sport’s most alluring virtues: female participation. Jena Antonucci, the first female trainer to win a Triple Crown race, and Kathleen O’Connell, the all-time leading female trainer, are both based in Florida. Marilyn Campbell at Stonehedge Farm and Charlotte Weber at Live Oak Stud/Plantation are two of the top owner-breeders in the state. Along with Thayer and Dailey, they’re all pillars, strong and steadfast supports for racing.

Valerie Dailey

First Woman President of the FTBOA

Horses are the warp in the fabric of Valerie Dailey’s professional life. That is to say horses are the constant, like the fixed, vertical threads on a loom, or frame. The horizontal threads, which are known as the weft, are drawn over and under the warp, which remains stationary. Information technology, academia, real estate — they’re the moving and shifting threads that make up the weft in Dailey’s biographical fabric. But the horses are always there, from the very start.

While growing up in Sarasota, Dailey was actively involved with 4-H and horse shows. In that, she says, she always has “had a hand.” While getting her degree in economics at the University of Florida and then her master’s degree in agricultural operations management, she was active in 4-H, teaching classes and even judging horse shows.

“I kept that in the background,” she says. “I had to make a living and I had a real job.”

Real jobs of significance, in fact. She was Director of Information Technology for the College of Agriculture at the University of Florida and then had a similar position at the Health Science Center before moving on to Cox Communications, a company known for providing high-speed internet. But the horses were still there, in the background perhaps but ever present. And she was eager to bring them to the forefront.

According to her recollection of a conversation that took place more than 30 years ago, Hugh Dailey, a banker who would soon be her husband, had a suggestion for bringing horses more prominently into their lives. As she recalls, he came up with a terrific idea: He said, “If you really want to be involved in the horse industry, you need to be in the Thoroughbred business.”

But she needed some help with that: She didn’t know anybody very well who worked in the Thoroughbred business. And so Hugh introduced her to Barbara and Francis Vanlangendonck, whose Summerfield Sales Agency was quickly becoming one of the leading consignors in the country.

Dailey and Barbara Vanlangendonck formed a partnership, bought a couple broodmares, and started breeding horses. It happened that quickly, and the warp became more vivid. Of course, she was still involved in information technology, which was very exciting and interesting—until it wasn’t, and then she introduced another thread into the weave, real estate.

About 20 years ago, Dailey became a realtor; eight years later she became the owner of Showcase Properties of Central Florida, and throughout this circuitous weave, yes, horses remained the constant. Knowing the horse industry, its landscape and movers and shakers, augmented her real estate business. And so it should come as no surprise that she has been involved in some of the biggest real estate sales in the Marion County area—the late Arthur Appleton’s Bridlewood Farm in Ocala and, co-listed with Joan Pletcher, Satish Sanan’s Padua Farm in Summerfield. Many of the agents with Showcase also have ties to the horse industry, including two veterinarians.

Dailey’s breeding operation peaked with about 20 horses, plenty for a small farm. And these days, she explains, she finds more joy in keeping one or two horses to race—“That’s super fun.” Most of all, though, she says she finds immense satisfaction just in being connected in a significant and meaningful way with the Thoroughbred industry.

“I love it,” she says. “I support it, and I’m very proud to be part of the FTBOA…. Sometimes I like to take people through the barn and show them the horses. Anytime you walk by a Thoroughbred, he’ll have his head out of the stall and look happy. He’ll look like he’s enjoying what he’s doing.”

Before becoming the first female president of the FTBOA, she served on the board and was chair of the Charity Committee, which, according to board member and past president Brent Fernung, she “turned around.” And as president, according to multiple observers, Dailey worked conscientiously to be inclusive.

“She did a great job as president,” Fernung says. “She’s very smart, and she grasps all the issues quite readily.”

“She knows how this business works,” explains Francis Vanlangendonck, who’s also on the board and can recall how Dailey would tirelessly research pedigrees and apply “a good eye” before buying a prospect. “I think she was a great president.”

Over the years for Dailey, the accolades and honors have piled up, like the responsibilities: Realtor of the Year; member of the Marion County Value Adjustment Board; president of the Florida Board of Realtors; president of the Ocala and Marion County Association of Realtors; director on the board of the State of Florida 4-H Foundation; member of the Ocala/Marion County Chamber and Economic Partnership. And still the warp becomes increasingly vivid,

“We have rallied several breeders and owners and got them to participate along with our lobbyists,” Dailey says about her work with the FTBOA board and as president of the association. “A couple of years ago, we went to the legislature and talked about what the industry means not just to us but to the many people who support the industry in various ways. And so you rally people together, and the message gets out…. I think it’s all about the relationships you create and the hard work that’s put into letting people know about the horse industry… and all the ancillary services that go along with it. If the Thoroughbred industry fails, many people and many businesses will fail, too. I think we’ve done a good job helping people understand that.”

Stella Thayer

First Woman Florida Racetrack Owner

As a child of 10 or maybe 11 years old, Stella Thayer enjoyed going to the races, specifically to Sunshine Park, as it was called then. Surely she didn’t know the place’s rich history — Matt Winn of Churchill Downs fame was one of the founding partners, Babe Ruth sometimes came out to the track and during World War II the U. S. Army used Sunshine Park as a training facility. Nor was she able to enter the racetrack; minors weren’t allowed. And so she and a friend would stand atop an automobile—hopefully one that belonged to their parents—to watch the races.

One of the first things Thayer did when she became president of the racetrack was lift the ban on minors and create a play area for kids. Unlike the Sunshine Park of her childhood, Tampa Bay Downs periodically hosts family days. That’s jumping a little ahead in the story, but only to make this point: Everything at Tampa Bay Downs, everything it is today and has become, from the trackside cabanas to the Silks Poker Room to the five graded stakes races to the acclaimed turf course and the Seabiscuit exhibit—everything derives from the woman who as a little girl many years ago stood on top of an automobile to watch the races.

Her father, Chester Ferguson, put together a group of Tampa’s sporting businessmen to buy the racetrack in 1965. It was an investment, but not a very good one, as it turned out; and in the late 1970s, Ferguson and his partners were willing, even eager, to sell the property.

“I just thought that would be crazy,” Thayer says. “Of course, by then I owned a racehorse. My father said we could stay [invested] in the racetrack, but only if we had a partner. And so George Steinbrenner came in. That was in 1980, and my father died in 1983.”

Expectations initially were hopeful if not quite high. Thayer’s father believed Steinbrenner had “the cache and the knowledge” and the resources to make it all work. But “it didn’t work,” she recalls. And so the racetrack went up for auction.

“We were somewhat surprised we ended up with it,” Thayer says, referring to her brother, Howell, and the auction where they paid $16.5 million for the racetrack. (That would be $47,298,243, when adjusted for inflation, in today’s dollars.) “It was very risky. But I loved racing, and I always thought the area had promise. We thought we could make the racetrack better, and we thought it could do better. And it has, largely because I’ve had this wonderful team of people here with me for these many years. They love racing, they’re dedicated and they’re knowledgeable; and we try to do a little better each and every year.”

In an industry that hasn’t had many of them lately, Tampa Bay Downs is a genuine success story. Once upon a time that’s not too distant, it was a backwater racetrack off a two-lane road, forced outside the Tampa boundaries to the suburb of Oldsmar. It has become an attractive venue for some of the finest horses and horsemen in the country, not to mention for bettors.

“In 1980, when I really got more involved in the racetrack, I thought it was all very interesting,” Thayer says. “But I knew nothing about the business of horse racing. My father was not really thinking that his daughter the lawyer was going to get involved. I continued to practice law. I wrote all the checks—it was an all-cash business back then. And once simulcasting became popular, the business became much more complicated.”

Thayer welcomed kids, introduced Sunday racing and began full-card simulcasting. When Tampa Bay Downs began exporting its simulcast signal on Tuesdays, a dark day for most racetracks, it attracted a much wider audience. People in New York who had never heard of the place were suddenly fans. And when Tampa Bay Downs installed its turf course in 1997, the track suddenly attracted more horsemen and better horses than ever.

“I think Mrs. Thayer saw that a turf course would be an attraction and would improve our racing,” says Margot Flynn, the longtime vice president of marketing. “I think that was the impetus for much of the growth…. And we’re all about the horse here, about making the track and the course as safe as possible and generally making things better for the horses and the horsemen.”

That approach has proven to be remarkably successful. No other racetrack in America of comparable size and with comparable purses has been able to present such a consistently high-quality racing product. Tampa Bay Downs has been host to a stunning number of major stakes winners such as Street Sense, Always Dreaming, Tepin, Carpe Diem, Tapit Trice, Tapwrit, Super Saver, Royal Delta and World Approval, host also to many of the most prominent trainers in the country, such as Todd Pletcher, Chad Brown, Bill Mott and Mark Casse.

“We have put the emphasis on racing,” Thayer says. “Everybody who works here really cares about horse racing and about trying to provide a good racing experience. We keep trying to polish the apple each year, do a little something different, make investments here and there to improve…. You have to have something for everybody: Some people like hot dogs, and some want crab cakes.”

A member of The Jockey Club and former president of the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame, she was inducted into the Hall of Fame herself in 2023, as a Pillar of the Turf, an designation “to honor individuals who have made extraordinary contributions to Thoroughbred racing in a leadership or pioneering capacity at the highest level.”

“That was quite a shock, quite a surprise,” she says, and then, with a laugh, adds, “I know I wasn’t recognized because of the horses I’ve owned.” Wonderment is the only Group 1 winner she has ever had, she points out, and she has owned horses for about 50 years. But she has seven horses in training, three here and four in France, she says happily, proving that sport’s capacity for engendering hope is never-ending.

Thayer has been a horsewoman her entire life, riding at the age of five and standing atop cars to watch races at 10. Her appreciation for the horse imbues everything she does at the racetrack. Her love of the sport and her respect for its workers are why 90% of Tampa Bay Downs’ share of the money from the recently passed Florida HB7063 , or about $5 million, went to purses. Yes, that appreciation informs and permeates every decision, and it, along with her inherent graciousness, endears Thayer to virtually everyone at Tampa Bay Downs.

In its most recent season, purses increased 35% to $246,000 a day. Handle increased 2.4%, entries were up 10%, stall applications up 25%, field size up nearly 10%—all this despite 18 turf days lost to an uncommonly rainy season and a tote shutdown on Tampa Bay Derby day that cost the track an estimated $5 million in handle.

Peter Berube, the vice president and general manager who has been at Tampa Bay Downs for 29 years, said the purse supplements will continue next season and he expects the track to continue its progress going forward. Tampa Bay Downs is one of the sport’s gems, and Thayer and her staff polish it with devotion.

The Hall of Fame only ratified what Florida has long known. Without Stella Thayer, would Tampa Bay Downs even been there, in Oldsmar, a retreat and haven and repository for racing’s quiet, but inspirational virtues? She’s indeed a pillar of racing.

But it might be more appropriate to compare Thayer and the other five women in this series — Antonucci, O’Connell, Weber, Campbell and Dailey — to the pillars sculpted by the ancient Greeks. Strong, dauntless pillars of support sculpted into the shape of women, they were called caryatids. Recognition of irreplaceable female support stretches all the way back to the ancient world, it seems, all the way back to the Erechtheion, the temple of Athena, at the Acropolis in Athens, which was constructed nearly 2,500 years ago. It was supported by six caryatids.